"aem" > wrote

> On Nov 7, 10:15 am, "Nancy Young" > wrote:
>> "Sqwertz" > wrote
>>
>> > On Wed, 7 Nov 2007 11:41:56 -0500, Nancy Young wrote:
>>
>> >> They must be a barrel of laughs in a Chinese restaurant, given the
>> >> plural issues most of their menus have.
>>
>> > I kinda expect multiple shrimps in my dishes.
>>
>> And if there's something served with Chinese vegetable,
>> I would like to know which one.
>>
> Sometimes "Chinese vegetable" is short for "Chinese preserved
> vegetable," which is a pickled/fermented, shredded kind of radish and
> cabbage. But you're right, Chinese menus often don't do a good job
> with English distinctions between singular and plural. That's because
> the Chinese language most often doesn't make any distinction between
> plural and singular, relying on context to make it known which is
> which, if it matters in the first place, which it often does not.

I grew up with a Japanese stepmother with similar plural issues,
so it's sort of endearing to me. I laugh about that one printer thing
that Joe mentioned, I've thought that in the past. Maybe they don't
correct it out of some sort of Chinese menu tradition.

> As to the Italian -i plural and -o singular, using the Italian form
> just sounds odd in ordinary English. A friend of mine the other day
> said he had seen a particularly inventive "graffito." Everyone in the
> small group gave him a hard time for pretentiously demonstrating that
> he know something about Italian......

(laugh) Graffito, that's funny.

nancy